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Temp got to about 40 degrees yesterday I did a little heat treating. I recently made a drift for hammer heads and from the excess I made a nice little slot punch. I did the general quick blacksmith temp as I know I will eventually pull the temper out of it when using it. I tried to draw a second temper on it by torch - and over shot it by purple. Rats, still skates a file and no cracks. Not too bad for mystery f-350 axle.

Not too worried about the temper. A 1/8 slot punch is going to lose its temper so fast anyway.

Edited December 4, 2018 by Daniel W

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So I built a mini work bench for the dayton to set on. Got that built this morning but man is it cold, anyone on the eastern edge of the rockies be ready for a cold snap coming your way. How ever it holds the dayton just fine with the weight. So now I just need to run over to home depot and pick up some bolts so I can bolt the thing down to the bench top. The only thing that is bugging me with this though is the bolt holes on the dayton are in just a really bad spot. They could have done better by putting the bolt holes on all four outside corners of the machine. That would have been the better idea of it. The bench is roughly 36 inches tall.

I cut the lower bit of the back guard off so it can fit the thicker belts. If you don't the only kind of belts you can fit are the thinner W weight belts. If you do that I would suggest having your dad cut that part off for you. It can be tricky to get at. But with the lower back gone I can fit a thicker belt.

cut the lower bit of the back guard off so it can fit the thicker belts. If you don't the only kind of belts you can fit are the thinner W weight belts. If you do that I would suggest having your dad cut that part off for you.﻿ It can be tricky to get at. But with the lower back gone I can fit a thicker bel

Great I will do that once I get mine, I actually have much more knowledge and skill with tools than my dad (the only tool he knows how to use is a small drill)

I am making a small EDC for a friend to give as a Christmas present. I got the steel made, the blade forged and the grinding, heat treat and finish hand sanding. All set to go into the etch. It etched for two 10-minute cycles and there's a weld flaw that just appeared down low on the edge in the center of the blade. Good thing I have more of that steel, but it's gonna be close to have it ready for Santa to deliver. Crappy pics.

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My 14 year old son started watching forged in fire and caught the bug this last summer. While I was at work he went out and bought an old, frozen hand crank champion blower and forge for a couple hundred bucks he had saved up. I told him if he got it running I would let him use my old (Trenton 190ish pound early 1900s) anvil. Well he got it running and built an open air forge in the front yard.... and stole my anvil. For some reason I don’t have any finished pics, but here he is building it.

Now that winter has come this will be surrounded with 3-4 feet of snow and I work at my real job from dark to dark.

I wanted a small anvil for the garage so I can continue to work through the cold winter months. I bought a 4x4 (10 inches long) anvil from Old World Anvils, trimmed down a stump my dad had laying on his property and made up this concoction...

the anvil sets down into the stump about 4 inches and is set in 100% silicon at the base

then I used shims to wedge it in there pretty tight.

Seems pretty small with all you guys running big power hammers on here, but it lets me work in the middle of the night so I’m pretty excited...

I have a little power hammer and I use it mostly to pull tangs out. I've been thinking about getting one of those OW anvils myself. It's really all you need, especially for knives where you do not need a lot of surface area to support the work. I think @Geoff Keyes has one of those in his forging station and is often singing the praises of that "little" anvil.

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Somebody's dropping by after work for some tips on a DIY gas forge, so last night after beers, dinner and some youtubes, I thought to myself......"the paint should be dry, why not start assembling the new belt grinder?"......

I go for the little box the VFD was in, and immediately notice it's a bit empty, and I realize there's nothing in there except a few odds & ends....and the list of fasteners I bought.

Thought back and realized it's been two days since I countersunk the holes for the 6mm tapered Allen bolts in the work rest, the bit is still in the drill press. Checked in my flat to make sure I wasn't crazy, the invoice for the stuff was there on my counter.....all N$38 worth of invoice.

To put that in perspective, N$38 = US$2.66

Today is 20/12/2018, that means realistically two weeks before I can replace what was seemingly taken by flipping fairies....and finish building my grinder.

I went to bed angry, I slept angry, and I woke up angry.....and before the sun was up I was standing in that garage making sure I wasn't staring at my eyelids.....

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Completed a copper bolster for a 7" chef in 80CrV2. The angled shoulders sure made this interesting, for a moment I thought I had bit more than I could chew but they say you have to push your limits so did I...

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Well, I've done nothing of interest in the shop. However Santa has been good to me with work. For the last two months, I've been working day and night to file orders. Still have a lot, but the Christmas rush is done :-) Yesterday, I finish the last of the promised Christmas orders in the morning, took the rest of the day off, and it felt anticlimactic, I didn't know what to do with myself.

45 minutes ago, Joël Mercier said:

It's the second copper bolster I do for kitchen knives. I had no idea about its reactivity to acids. Guess I'll try a forced patina...